Support Periods and Affiliates
If you work with affiliates, you may be wondering how support period renewals interact with your affiliate agreements. This article explains what affiliates are and aren't owed when your customers renew.
Affiliates Do Not Earn Automatic Residuals on Renewals
When a customer purchases a support period renewal, that transaction is treated as a new sale, not a continuation of the original purchase. Affiliates do not automatically earn a commission on future support period purchases from this customer simply because they drove the original sale, even if that sale happened within the affiliate's referral window. Your affiliate agreements do not create any ongoing residual obligation tied to future support period purchases.
This means that if a customer purchases an additional support period 12 months or more after their original purchase, you won't owe your affiliates a commission on that renewal unless that affiliate actively delivered the customer back to Superhive for that specific transaction.
Affiliates Can Earn on Renewals They Actively Drive
That said, affiliates are able to earn commissions on support period purchases the same way they earn on any other sale. They do this by delivering the customer to Superhive within the 14-day referral window. If a customer clicks an affiliate's link and then purchases a new support period within 14 days, the affiliate earns a commission on that purchase.
The commission is calculated using the agreed-upon rate between you and the affiliate, applied to the actual purchase price of the support period. Because additional support periods are priced at a discounted rate of your current product price, the commission will be proportionally smaller than what an affiliate would earn on a new full-price sale but it still represents a meaningful share for an affiliate who helped bring a lapsed customer back.
Why This Is Worth Understanding
This structure gives affiliates a genuine incentive to promote your products beyond launch day. An affiliate who creates content about an exciting update — new features, a major compatibility improvement, a redesigned workflow — can earn a commission if a viewer with an expired support period is convinced to purchase a new support period to access these exciting new updates. In that scenario, the affiliate actually helped you win back a customer you might not have recovered otherwise.
For creators, this means your affiliate relationships have value not just at launch but throughout the life of your product. Affiliates who stay engaged with your product updates are working in your interest, and the commission structure rewards them for it without creating any automatic residual liability on your end.
For more on how the 14-day referral window works, see How Referrals Work.